


Leaving behind Sweet Sixteen

by AthenaErrata



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21545389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaErrata/pseuds/AthenaErrata
Summary: Pre-Books, Harry at Ebenezar's farm is thinking back on the year it all went to hell with Justin and Elaine. Fleshes out a conversation with Susan in a story where Harry tells her of his first sexual experience - in The Rodriguez Files. Dark.
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Elaine Mallory
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	Leaving behind Sweet Sixteen

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [First Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21521593) by [AthenaErrata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaErrata/pseuds/AthenaErrata). 



> Please note the warnings, there's sex, its graphic and its disturbing.

I’m seventeen. Today is my seventeenth birthday. I’m standing at the very threshold of Ebenezar’s land and I want to run. Just run and run until I can’t anymore. But there's no point. He’ll find me, he’ll kill me. I remember turning sixteen. Elaine made me cupcakes to celebrate with those little birthday candles and I lit them with magic, all pleased with myself. Pleased with her. We were girlfriend and boyfriend. We hadn’t told anyone, not even Justin. It was our secret. She kissed me and we got a little worked up. And we held hands, our fingers intertwining. I licked some icing off her pinky and saw her thrill slightly at the touch of my tongue on her skin. I’d wondered whether we’d have sex that year. Or whether it was too soon. I didn’t want to push.

Well we did have sex that year, that year it all went to hell. And now I am here. I am not going to cry. I am never going to cry, ever again. Someone like me doesn’t deserve to cry.  
I look out over the trees, night is going to come soon, or Ebenezar will find me soon. I should get back, Im not allowed to be outside after sunset. But I don’t move. Instead I think about the last year, the year it had all gone to hell. I remember Elaine and feel tears coming. Dammit, I will not cry. But I remember her before everything happened. How we’d been: silly, stupid, kids. Elaine and me. Silly, stupid, headstrong, kids. We’d been friends at first. Two children who lived together and shared a secret. We were wizards. It was cool. Way cooler than any of the kids at school, no matter how much they teased us about our shabby clothes and the weird old house we lived in. Way cooler cos we could make fire come, and wind and do all kinds of things – like in comic books. We had magic and knew things they couldn’t even conceive of. So that meant we were cooler than anyone didn;t it? Magic made everything cooler. And then we’d fallen in love. I remembered the weeks and weeks of wondering what was happening. Was it just hormones and growing up? Was it falling in love? Agonising over whether she felt like I did. How sometimes I looked at her and felt my heart respond to her beauty, her grace. How much I liked her wit, how nice it was to have her steadfast good sense - so different from my own unruly heart. Clear, calm, strong, wonderful Elaine.

I’d grown up with her, sort of, but not long enough that it didn’t feel ok that I fancied her. Wanted to touch her - not like I was her brother or a friend. But like how a boy wants to touch a girl he likes. Really likes. Wants to feel if her skin is as soft and smooth as it looks. Self-conscious about noticing her breasts or how her hips now had sweet graceful curve to them and how that made my body feel. The first time we kissed we’d been practising evocations by the river. I’d done my spell a bit too hard, it came out wonky and knocked her in. I jumped in after, to save her, like she couldn’t swim. She was laughing at what an idiot I was. I started pulling her up the bank and suddenly we got all fuddled. I’d grown the year before and was now taller than her and sometimes didn’t seem to know where all the parts of me were anymore. I slipped and fell, pulling her atop me. Her hair was on my face, her smiling mouth so close to mine and I just pushed up, and closer, and kissed her. And we froze and I thought ‘oh no’. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing, have her hate me, or laugh at me. Instead she paused and blinked at me, and kissed me back. Gentle and sweet. And then she said ‘you feel it too?’ My heart could have burst.  
That spring and summer were beautiful. We skipped out a lot, going on ‘runs’ so we could hide out in the fields in the summer sun and kiss and cuddle and whisper to each other about how we felt. At home, we snuck into each other’s beds to hold each other while we slept. We’d talked about taking the next step a little. But mainly our making out had got hotter and heavier. Kissing and touching each other through our clothes, eager, wanting, panting, thinking we were all grown up. And then Justin called us into his bedroom.  
It was our secret but of course he’d known what we’d been doing. Justin always knew everything. I thought he was going to read us the riot act. We lived together under his roof, we were ‘brother and sister’. Well not technically, but I could see the reasons why us having a relationship was not a good idea. I thought there’d be separate rooms and a telling off. Maybe I’d have to go sleep in the attic instead of in the room we shared. Or maybe we’d get a talk on pregnancy and birth control and STIs. Maybe he would tell us to wait a year or two. I could wait, for her, I could wait. But I never, ever expected what happened next.

Justin sat us on his bed, side by side. Naughty children. And then he brought in the big high-backed armchair from the hall and sat in it across from us. 

‘Harry, Elaine. You are growing up. Your bodies are maturing, developing urges. Sexual urges.’ We blushed furiously. ‘I know that for some time now you have been indulging those urges.’

‘We haven’t,’ Elaine started. Justin sent a quelling look in her direction. She looked down. ‘We haven’t done it yet,’ she whispered. 

‘Yes, yes,’ he said in his oddly accented English. 'You haven’t had sex yet'. He looked directly at us both. ‘But you want to.’

I felt my ears burn.

He stood up. ‘The thing is that for wizards sex is different.’ That made me look up with interest. Another thing that made us different to other children, made us cooler.  
‘Yes. sex is about energy, just like magic.' He looked meaningfully at us. 'It's about power. You both have a lot of power and will need to be taught how to use it. And I am your teacher. Your master.’  
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.

‘Stand up Elaine, walk to me.’ She did, I watched her slender body from under my lashes as she stepped forward to stand in front of Justin

‘I am your teacher’, he repeated ‘and even in this matter I will teach you.’ His voice changed to the tone he used to let me know he’d hit me if I didn’t obey. ‘Harry you will stay exactly where you are. Sit still and learn boy. Elaine remove your clothes.’

She flinched visibly from his instruction. Justin remained totally calm, expecting us to do as we were bid. He stood up and walked to his dresser, picking out a small jar of salve.  
‘Take your clothes off, I will not repeat myself.’ Flushing slightly Elaine did what she was told. Her T-shirt came off, and her jeans, she stood by the armchair trembling slightly in her cotton bra and pants. Justin raised an eyebrow and with a jerk of his head indicated that this was not enough. I watched Elaine fumble to remove her underclothes.

My mouth went dry, partly in shock, partly in arousal. I’d never seen her naked. Her pretty, slender body with its modest breasts, pale and tall in Justin’s bedroom. Justin walked over and slowly and deliberately put his finger in her mouth, sliding it in and out to wet it. ‘This salve will help with the demonstration.’ He mixed her saliva with what was in the little pot and smeared the mixture on her nipples. Wetting his fingers in her mouth again, he streaked the salve down her belly all the way to the pretty tangle of curls at her mound. ‘And thrice, Elaine’ he said putting his fingers in her mouth a third time, mixing them with the salve and rubbing his fingers between her legs. Then he turned to me, stepping over. ‘Open your mouth Harry’ he ordered. He dipped the salve smeared fingers into my mouth. 

‘The salve will enable your magical senses to track desire as it ebbs and flows through the body’. Still your minds and focus on it.’ It did, I could feel the spots of sensation over Elaine’s body with my wizard senses. The slight hum on her skin. ‘Focus on it, Elaine, allow it to grow, open yourself to it. Harry observe closely, I will expect you to do as I do when I am done.’

He stepped over behind Elaine whose eyes had closed in concentration and allowed his hands to wander over her body. At first just above the skin, sensing the energy within her, then touching her gently stroking and teasing her. His touch was light. I felt her respond and found my own body responding to hers as I watched Justin touch her. His hands were sure and confident, a contrast the fumbling hesitation that had marked our petting. Her response to what he was doing was swifter, easier than she ever had to me.  
‘Good girl’ he whispered, ‘you’re doing well. Relax.’ She was shaking slightly. Justin cupped her breasts from behind, weighing them gently in his palms before pinching her nipples. They had formed peaks. He flicked one and she gasped. 

‘Yes,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘yes allow your responses, allow your pleasure.’ I could feel it building inside her as though I was somehow inside her body too. The salve had created a magical link and I could follow how Justin’s hands were building and stoking the reactions from Elaine’s body in exactly the right ways, like a man builds a fire stoking the flames and embers in exactly the right ways. ‘Harry wants to touch you too, he’s aching to.’

Elaine’s eyes flew open and met mine. I could see her torn indecision and feel the same agony in myself, unbearably aroused and yet wishing we were alone. Doing this together and not with Justin. 

‘This needs to happen,’ Justin murmured, moving around to taste Elaine’s nipples and mouth her breasts. ‘Once you have both been taught you can do this together.’ Elaine moaned, her eyes fluttering shut. The sound did something to me I couldn’t name. I was achingly hard. 

Justin sat back in the armchair with Elaine standing in front of him. He still had all his clothes on as he licked and kissed her belly and breasts. From where I sat on the bed I could see the shudders ran through her body at his touch and my wizard senses showed me the energy building within her, her need rising, responding to him like the tide to the moon. He started to move his hands over her buttocks and hips, easing her thighs apart his hand came to touch her sex, stroking her there where she’d never been touched before’ Her hips moved in reaction, circling motions, seeking more. 

‘Yes, good’ he whispered, ‘you are getting wet, getting ready.’ Something like a sob came from Elaine.

‘Are you ready?’ he whispered, ‘are you willing? Let me make you a woman.’

Elaine didn’t respond, although her hips moved in time with his touch.

‘Sit on the bed’. She did and Justin knelt in front of her. His lips teased her belly and thighs as his fingers continued to work her. I could feel the energy rising and almost breaking inside her as she shuddered slightly against his fingers. Crying out with a tiny gasp. 

‘Good, good’ murmured Justin. He took her chin in his hand, ‘open your eyes and look at me. Tell me, are you ready to become a woman?,

Elaine nodded. ‘I need you to say it’

‘I am ready’ she whispered and he hissed in triumph

‘Are you willing for me to make you a woman?’

‘I am willing’

‘I am your master’

‘You are my master’

‘Good girl.’ 

And with that Justin unzipped his pants and withdrew his erection. He placed the tip against the opening in Elaine’s body. ‘Look at me while I take your virginity’ he commanded. Then he pushed into her body slowly, coming to rest about half way in. ‘Not only a virgin, but an intact hymen. Good girl, your blood will strengthen our bond’. Then he gripped her hard and thrust himself fully into her body. She cried out in pain as he deflowered her. Gasping she lay pinned under him. ‘Focus on it, feel it, Feel where you are pierced.’ Through the salve link I could feel the fullness in Elaine's body where Justin had penetrated her. Justin eased out and back in sliding through the newly opened channel until she gasped and arched into a shuddering bow. I sat transfixed, watching my girlfriend have sex with my guardian less than a meter away. So confused and so aroused.  
Justin withdrew from her and there were some streaks of blood and wetness. He was still hard. He mixed more salve in the juices of her pussy anointing her again and then coming over to put the goop in my mouth ordering me to sit in the high-backed armchair. Elaine seemed dazed, but he positioned her in front of me, her thighs outside my knees, kneeling over me. Naked, beautiful as the moon. 

‘Touch her Harry, stoke her desire again. Ready her for me’. My hands came up on autopilot to stroke her body. My wizard senses guided me to her needs, touching her more surely than I ever had before. My mouth went to her breast and every hesitation left me as I touched her, spurring her desire that now seemed to race frantic through her body. My hand went to her sex and I stroked her there as Justin had done. Feeling the little button at the front that seemed to ratchet her body’s urging higher. Her hips bucked as she seemed to swell under my hands, the energy in her rising. Mewling cries of need came from her and I made her gasp and moan with my hands and my mouth.  
‘I’m going to fuck you now’ came Justin’s voice and with that he took hold of her body at the hips and slammed himself inside her in fierce thrusts. Elaine’s eyes flew open. Startled at the intensity of the feelings coursing through her. I could feel the intense pleasure of Justin’s cock inside her, taking her to new heights. I watched her body buck and writhe the energy within her taking her apart as Justin found his release inside her body. 

She cried out ‘master’ at the moment of completion. Satisfaction flashed on Justin’s face. ‘Yes you are mine now’ he murmured.

My arousal fell to ash as jealousy roared inside me. And anger. This was wrong. It felt wrong. He was our teacher, our guardian, he shouldn’t be doing this. And she wasn’t his, she was her own, and she was mine because I loved her.

Justin looked at me coolly, knowing my thoughts. ‘We are wizards Harry ,we do this differently. You are jealous understandably but you will get your turn with her when you are ready.’

I closed my eyes swallowing hard.

\----x----

Later that night I crept into Elaine’s bed to hold her, but we were too stunned to speak. The next day we come home from school to find my bed had been moved into the attic. ‘Until you are initiated too, you may not have her. Meredith will be coming this weekend. Then it will be your turn’. I looked at my little bed, crammed in among the boxes and junk wrestling with dismay and a nauseating excitement.

\---x----

That night Justin fucked Elaine in earnest. In front of me. The moon was at its peak and the sex was a ritual of domination and submission he explained. The female in her was to yield to the maleness in him. He had her on her knees sucking him until he came, spurting onto her face and breasts. He used that to mix with the salve, using it more liberally all over her body, coating her entire sex and breasts with it before making me taste it. Then on all fours they did it again, and again, like animals in rut. She was mindless with lust lost in an ecstasy I couldn’t understand. I was turned on and disgusted at once, angry and jealous and outraged until at the end he scooped up the Juices of their coupling and made me swallow them, muttering a word that made me come in my pants.

The next night he made me touch her, we were both naked, her on the bed her legs spread open in front of me. Me kneeling on the floor, naked between her knees. Following orders or refusing to in ways that got me slaps around the head that made my ears ring. I could handle that, Justin beatings were common. I didn’t want to touch her at his command. To do it by rote, under instruction. What I couldn’t handle was Elaine’s frustrated gasps as my ideas of what to do didn’t live up to what Justin had in mind. I wanted to fight it, to take back control, but I didn’t know how. Elaine's voice was agonised in my ear ‘Harry please stop fighting it, I need..’ And I gave up and touched her just as he directed until she arched and came, the way Justin wanted. 

I skipped school the next day, going for a long walk along the country lanes near the house. Ending up at the river bank where Elaine and I had first kissed. Soon I’d be initiated too and then I’d be allowed to sleep with Elaine. As I’d wanted, for weeks. My heart ached looking at the spot where it had happened, remembering the sweet thrill of that first kiss. The excitement, the fear, and how right it had all felt. The buoyant joy of finding her feeling as I did. The hundreds of gentle touches and hand holds since. My stomach rolled at my recent memories of her with Justin. And a sadness at the memory of the night before. I’d heard of oral sex, the usual playground whispers of disgusting things adults get up to, that had in the last year or so turned playground whispers of the intriguing things adults get up to. I hadn’t really got round to wondering what it would be like to have oral with Elaine. But whatever I would have fantasied about, it would have been different to what we’d done at Justin’s direction. I hung my head gazing at the water. 

On Friday afternoon Justin was out and Elaine and I shared a free period. We walked home in silence. Finally when we got in Elaine asked: ‘Are you angry with me Harry?’ I was going to ignore her, but then plumbed for denial ‘why would I be’

‘Because of me’ she hesitated ‘me and Justin’. 

‘Why would I care?’ I shot at her. Teenagers are just that stupid.

‘Harry please, you watched me have sex with Justin and now you won’t talk to me. Even just logically the two things are related.'

I slammed the door anger roiling in me ‘I didn’t just watch you have sex, I watched you enjoy sex, with him. It makes me feel sick. Its disgusting’

The hurt in Elaine’s eye starting bringing me to my senses just as she shot back: ‘You enjoyed it too, I saw it. If I'm disgusting you are too.’

I was being an asshole. I was jealous, I was angry, I was sad. I was attacking my only real friend, Elaine, the girl I loved. I tried to marshall my feelings and did what I often did when I felt confused. I asked Elaine. She was always so much clearer, steadier than I. ‘Im sorry. I don’t know what I feel’

Her hand went to her mouth as she started crying, trying to hold it in. ‘I don’t know what I feel either Harry. I don’t know anything anymore. I - I hate it and love it at the same time. I don’t understand me anymore. It's like Im not really here anymore. I want it. It feels good but it also feels….’ she looked around her eyes wild.

..it feels wrong..’ I supplied

She nodded. I held her close to me. This felt a bit more familiar a bit more like ‘us’ maybe even just the friend us from our younger years. Working together, playing together, doing homework together all those years. Us, me and Elaine figuring something out like we always did.

‘I guess its wizard sex’ Elaine ventured. ‘I suppose ordinary human sex isn’t like in storybooks either?’ 

‘I guess not but…’ I squared my shoulders realising the truth I'd felt at the river bank. ‘If this is wizard sex I don’t want it.’ 

‘But Justin said we had to be taught’

I stuck out my jaw, mulish, 'I don’t care. I don’t want it like this.'

‘So you're going to be celibate?’ she snorted. My lidibo had always run a few degrees higher than hers 

I made no answer.

‘Harry you have to do what he tells you. He always wins in the end, he’ll beat you or starve you until you do in the end.’ Her eyes were anguished, I knew she was remembering the time I'd refused to practice shielding and he'd made me sleep outside in the shed in winter after a beating I wasn’t likely to ever forget. After several nights in the cold I'd ended up in hospital.

‘Harry, you have to do what he wants.’

Childishly I fell back onto the patter of our youth: ‘Don’t be such a goody-two shoes.’ 

‘Don’t be such a rebel-without-a-cause.’

Trading old insults made it feel more like familiar ground. Same old argument, just a really, really, really different topic. We smiled at each other, but the worry wasn’t gone. What would we do, what could we do? Could we tell someone? But who would listen? No one from the authorities or school could come up against Justin and if he heard of it what would he do to us? And then my thoughts at the riverbank came back to me.

‘Elaine’ I sad quietly, ‘I want you to be my first, please. Meredith is coming and I don’t want to do it with her first. I want it to be with you and be the way we are.’ My voice sounded choked, my eyes pleading on her face

Elaine’s eyes went round with fear. ‘If Justin finds out, he’ll..’

‘He wont find out, we wont tell him’. 

She bit her lip, I knew she was thinking that he always found out in the end. 'He wont find out,' I bowed my head, I'd been so keen not to push her, not to be the teenage boy talking his girl into sex before she's ready. I winced, was this any more right than what Justin had done?

I looked away trying not to sound as desperate as I felt ‘I wont push, but please, if you want to at all, come to the attic tonight.’

She did, she came to me that night and in that dingy attic room we soul gazed and touched each others bodies, slowly, exploring. Our kisses were gentle and sweet, our hands patient and we built our own kind of fire and I entered her. We had sweet, awkward, teenage sex and it was wonderful. ‘I love you’ I gasped as I came inside her, I'd never said it before. ‘I love you too Harry’. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Don’t cry, oh Elaine don’t cry.’ She clung to me holding me close, her face in my neck. ‘Elaine, what is it? Did I do it wrong? I know it wasn’t', my voice felt strangled at the admission, ‘it wasn’t like it is with him’. She hadn’t moaned and screamed the way she had with Justin, I was an ass but part of me was disappointed or scared that I’d disappointed her. She cried harder ‘no Harry no, don’t please. It’s not that, it’s just’ She sniffled ‘It’s just, it was special, it felt real’. She looked into my eyes ‘I wish you’d been my first too’. We held each other under the dim light that came through the dormer window, happy and sad and scared. Maybe for Elaine, Justin had taken my place and I just didn’t know it yet. But for me it was perfect in all its fumbling imperfection, sweet and loving with the girl I loved.

That weekend Meredith came. She was an older woman, with a dark lush beauty. Elaine and I had overheard her and Justin in more innocent times. The noises from his bedroom making us giggle and turning us on. Her body was heavily curved, buxom and ripe. Long dark hair framed a white face with dark eyes and a sensual mouth. I’d been guilty of looking at her more than once wondering what they'd been doing to have them make those kind of noises. Noises that made me hard and want to touch myself in the dark, Now the thought of what was to come made me squirm uneasily. 

When the time came Justin stayed in the room with us. She anointed me with salve and spit, her hand working my cock hard with a sure touch that ignored the way I flinched from her attentions. Stripped bare she lay back on the bed in front of me and anointed herself in sure smooth motions. Watching my reactions, she spread her legs deliberately in front of me, touching herself. The lust I felt at the sight slammed through me, shockingly intense. The salve had heightened my sexual awareness into something mind-numbing. ‘You will do as I say’ Justin intoned. My mouth had gone dry, breath coming in sharper gasps as he instructed me to touch and taste her body, her sex. She moaned and arched beneath my attentions, wanton, totally unashamed and it stoked my desire to a frenzied peak. ‘Marshall control in yourself’ Justin commanded. I breathed as I had been taught straining to do as Id been told. Finally I entered her, the sensation overwhelmingly good. She stiffened under me, suddenly alert. ‘He has been had,’ she hissed to Justin. ‘What!’ The outrage in Justin’s tone was palpable. ‘I knew it!’ She hissed, ‘I told you, this one was always the more unruly.’ Justin jerked my head up by the hair. ‘You went against my orders with Elaine?’

I refused to reply. ‘There is still the other way’ Justin spat.

‘It wont work as well, he is not sufficiently apart from his own desires yet,’ Meredith countered, ‘he will fight you.’

‘But I will win,’ I shuddered at the tone of his voice, it was the one he used when promising the worst of his punishments, grim and determined. ‘We’ve come too far to be defied at this late stage by this arrogant chit. Ensure he stays hard within you.’

Justin released my hair but I felt magical restraints pinning me in place around each thigh. I was still inside Meredith and her cunt contracted around me, pulsing rhythmically. My damn dick got harder inside her despite the fear rapidly dissipating my desire. The vice of a magical constraint came next, settling around my shaft and balls, enforcing my erection. Justin had come up behind me with the salve again. He started spreading it liberally over me from behind, working the ointment into my crack, over my asshole. ‘No no, stop’ I gasped. But his hands kept moving, fingers gliding over me touching and rubbing and pushing into me invasive yet maddening. I felt the power of the salve and the power of their wills amplify the sensations in my body and found to my horror that I was starting to moan and pant with need. Not knowing whether to push forward more into the hot sheath of Meredith or to push back to where those fingers were touching me and drawing unfamiliar sensations. A finger pushed into me, crooking to stroke me from the inside and my body went rigid with unexpected white-hot pleasure. Even as tears welled in my eyes and every fibre of me wanted not to want what was happening, I knew I was arching bucking, increasingly desperate for more of what Justin was doing to me.  
They played with me for a while, my body a toy for their amusement. Making me whine and whimper, before making me beg for Justin to take my virginity and grant me the pleasure of my release. I screamed when he took me. He fucked me through the agony of it, and the blistering pleasure. Meredith had moved away but was watching greedily as I bucked under Justin, unable to come with the vice round my balls.  
‘Ask me, boy, ask me to let you come’ he snarled. I knew it was intended as a final humiliation for daring to defy him.

I gritted my teeth trying to refuse. He took my cock in his hand jerking me ramping up the sensations, angling his own cock in a way that made it feel like my heart would stop beating.

‘Ask me!’

I gave a little. ‘Please, sir, please let me come.’

‘Who masters you?’

Silence

The fury in his voice on the repetition was terrible: ‘who masters you?’

I broke, sobbing, ‘you, you are my master.’ 

The vice around my cock and balls disintegrated and I came in agonised spasms, sobbing the horror of it, at the pleasure of it. I passed out. When I woke I was alone on the bed, sweat dried to my body, a trail of blood and sperm between my legs. I curled up in the bed, stunned, scared. Elaine came in, eyed the bloodstains. 

‘Harry?’

I shook my head at her, desperate, ‘please just don’t’. I felt like I was going to fly apart. She sat next to me on the bed, her movements hesitant. ‘Are you ok?’ I couldn’t look at her. She took my hand curling her fingers round mine the way we always did. ‘I heard you screaming.. and moaning…’ I shook violently. It was like Justin had torn something out of me. My control, who I was, what I wanted - didn’t matter. I’d just responded to him, I'd wanted him, needed what he was doing to me.

‘It feels like…it feels like Im not really there when its happening’ Elaine started. ‘It feels bad and it feels good at the same time. I don’t know whats me anymore.’

I knew what she meant. Under Justin’s hands I’d been a sort of thing. Something that reacted and responded, but not really me. Id always been more fickle, headstrong than Elaine. My emotions rushing from one state to another. She was the steady one. Sure in herself in a way that was unusual for someone our age. To hear her say the same was comforting, but also made it worse. If she didn’t know who or what she was, there was no hope I'd figure it out, I felt scrambled. Full of dark things.

That night Justin and Meredith took Elaine to their bed. I lay in my attic bedroom trying to blot out her frantic cries of pleasure and pain. Her ‘please, please, please’ as she begged them to stop, begged them for more. I wanted more than anything to go and protect her, to save her. But I didn’t dare. Rooted to the safety of my bed. I was a coward.

In the days after that she was gone from me. I tried to talk to her about what was happening, what we could do. But she blanked me, telling me I needed to accept it. That Justin was teaching us, we should be grateful to our master. I wished so hard I hadn’t been a coward, that I'd done something, stopped them, brought her back to me so she wasn’t out of my reach the way she was now. She was with them and I was alone. If only I hadn't been a coward, if only I'd protected her.

Then, that final day, I came home and Justin wanted me to join him in taking Elaine, to 'join us all together'. I ran, and he sent a demon after me. Finally I got myself together, determined to confront him, to get Elaine back. To shake her from whatever spell he had her under and bring her back to me. But it all went wrong. Instead of me rescuing her, she helped him hold me down. She held me in place so he would be able to take control of me. I fought back, fought him, fought her. And then they burned. I made them burn.

I wiped at my eyes, thinking of the girl I had loved who had betrayed me. I still couldn’t believe how she could have sided with Justin against me, after all we had together, all we had shared. We had loved each other, but in the end pleasing Justin outweighed whatever she had felt for me. That quiet gentle time in the attic room that no longer existed, maybe it never had for her. All burned to ash. I looked down swallowing hard. I don’t cry anymore.

\------x------------------

‘There you are boy.’ There was relief in Ebenezar’s voice, but when I turned round it didn’t show on his face 

‘I wondered where you’d got to, got a couple of things at the house for you.’

It had gotten dark, I was to be home at sunset, I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure how badly the old man would punish me, I hadn’t been on his farm long yet and I’d manage to do as I’d been told so far. So there’d been no chance yet to compare and contrast the beating he could give to one from Justin. Maybe Id find out today. Instead he just sat down next to me taking in the darkling view I hadn’t really seen. 

‘What are you out here brooding on?’

I bowed my head, staying silent

‘Comparing last year to where you are now?’ He asked quietly. 

I was surprised, I guess I am not the only one prone to reflection on his birthday.

‘Want to tell me some of it?’

I sat quietly, no idea where to start. Ebenezar allowed the silence and the darkness to stretch, patient as an oak. The quiet silence of the night, the still cool light of the moon and stars slowly emerging, the sound of the wind in the trees. He seemed totally relaxed and calm next to me – solid, reassuring. Not angry with me, although he had cause to be, and seemingly not afraid of me, although he had cause to be.

I started talking about what happened. Told him about Elaine, that Id loved her. And that Justin had initiated us into sex and how she’d betrayed me. I didn’t tell him about how Justin and Meredith had punished me. That Justin had fucked me and part of me liked it. Maybe I was afraid he’d give me more ‘lessons’. 

He took it in, breathing calmly in and out. And said after a long silence: ‘Seems to me that, in spite of all that, your instincts were good.’

‘Huh?’

‘You knew enough to have your first time with someone you loved. That’s important.’

I felt the anger and hurt rise in me. Elaine’s betrayal had been the most painful part of it all. 

‘She didn’t love me, she couldn’t have.’

‘However she felt, you loved her,’ said the old man simply, ‘that makes a difference.’ 

I sat quietly staring into the night. I won’t cry, I will never cry again.

‘And it causes a hurt that must be healed.’ Ebenezar continued.

My cheat constricted and I could barely breathe. Elaine, Elaine, at my last birthday she’d been there, alive, with cake and candles. We’d kissed and cuddled, sweet sixteen. My eyes blurred, we'd been happy..

‘The fact that she was your first would have afforded you a measure of protection against Justin you realise?’ 

I looked up sharply

‘Not all wizards are initiated by their masters and part of that practice has often been to provide a master with some measure of control. Usually exercised benevolently but not always. It seems he was trying to control you, your insistence on doing it your own way gave you a measure of power against him, particularly as you insisted on love.’

He let that sink in then continued

‘There’s plenty to learn about sex, but I won’t be teaching it you. It’s not my way. But generally, if you make sure sex stays close to love, you cant go far wrong.’

I nodded taking that it.

‘Its good rule, but can be a hard one to follow for a young man given the other strictures upon us.’

I felt my face heat up. He was talking about masturbation. Wizards don’t, erm, relieve themselves. It’s about energy and power and complicated, but basically there's no DIY for wizards or things flip over on themselves. I grimaced, there were going to be a lot of cold showers in my life, but that was the least of my worries. I didn't think I would ever want to have sex again really.

Ebenezar’s thick hand patted my shoulder gently. ‘Come on, its time to get inside.’

Back at Hog Hollow I was surprised to find Ebenezar had bought a cake to mark my birthday day. We ate it after dinner. Then he presented me with a tree branch from the old oak on his farm

‘Er... thank you?' I ventured, then afraid I had insulted him added ‘Thank you sir.

He smiled ‘Its for making a staff. A wizard’s got to have a staff. I'll show you how to carve the runes and learn to use it this year, help you control all that power you have better. By the time you're eighteen you’ll be a grown man with a grown wizard’s staff.’ He frowned thinking looking me over and added ‘Hoss.’

‘Hoss?’ I queried.

‘Hoss,’ he confirmed. ‘Big lad like you needs a nickname, remind us all he’s still a child.’

I smiled at him and for the first time in a long, long time my smile didn’t feel like a grimace.


End file.
